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The Venetian (band)
| current_members = The Venetian Steve David Ariel Shafir | past_members = Luca Spanio Kevin J. Witucky Jason Dean John K-Tap }} The Venetian is an Italian musician living in Brooklyn, New York. He is known for his theatrical live shows where he and the other musicians perform wearing masks and costumes and for mixing various genres in his songwriting especially Italian opera and rock songs. He is best known for his singles “The Black Cat” (that reached almost half million views on youtube ) and “Dancing Angel”. History Beginning Years In August 2006 Luca (this the real name of The Venetian) decided to move to Los Angeles, (CA) to attend Musicians Institute. After graduating he started working as session musician in Southern California only to realize that he wanted to play and record his own music. In 2007 he release an acoustic album under his real name that brought him touring all around California as a one-man show. This show included original compositions as well as cover of Queen, his favorite band. In 2008 he puts together a band that will bring him to perform in the California Music Festival and Santa Barbara Fair main stage. One night, while working on his second album, he decided to go for a walk and ended up at the Roxy Theatre where a band was performing in women clothes. And there something clicks. Once back home he started working on creating a more visual show. It’s in 2010 and after few months of studying the concept The Venetian is born. The idea was pretty simple, creating an act where Italian opera songs and rock songs are mixed together. I Wanna Tell You a Story and YouTube success (2010-2012) I Wanna Tell You a Story was released on February 3, 2011 (referring to the number 23). It’s a concept album where between each song sang in English there is an opera act sang in Italian that connects them, allowing the key change between each song. The Venetian started working on this album in 2010 thinking of it as a rock-opera album. The idea of creating a concept where all the songs are connected and the main theme is the same throughout the whole album came few months after. While he was still writing the songs, he noticed that love and death were thematics always present on the songs and decided to use that as force to forge the all concept. It was recorded in Los Angeles between August and October 2010. It tells the story of a man and his son getting together after the woman that was wife and mother died bringing them to talk about life, love and death. With no money, The Venetian used his own living room to track down vocals and bass and recorded only drums and guitars in studios. He spent a whole week overdubbing all the vocals (some songs have more than 30 vocal tracks). Few singles were released to promote this album; the most successful one was “Act II-The Black Cat” that reached almost half million views on YouTube since it was released. The Venetian decided that "Act II-The Black Cat" was going to be the last single before started working on his new album, however the success on YouTube brought him to play more shows to promote the album. The Valley EP and New York City (2013-Present) In March 2013 The Venetian started working on what became his new release. It was inspired by an Edgar Allan Poe poem (The Valley Of Unrest) cos he was really into Edgar Allan Poe while he was in the process of starting to work on a new release. After reading that poem he started working on new music and lyrics for a new album. In the same times he started suffering of depression and to come out of it decided to move to New York. He managed to record everything for the upcoming album (that he decides to release as an EP with only 5 songs) in Los Angeles and moved to New York in September of the same year. The Valley was released on December 10, 2013 and since then The Venetian is being performing all around New York. No videos have been released yet. Musicianship Influences The Venetian music is heavily influenced by Queen and James Brown. His first album contain a lot of reference from Queen (the middle choir in "Goodbye" is an small homage to Bohemian Rhapsody) as well as a lot of funk ("Sometimes" and "I Wanna Tell You I'm Sorry") that remind of Brown. He always said that when working as a session player he started loving almost all different styles of music and now he tries to put them together. The Beatles is another big influence in his music and songwriting and in "The Valley" he quotes the title of one The Beatles' song in each rock songs. Equipment Guitars and amps Even tho on his session stage he was mainly using a Fender Stratocaster, right before deciding to become The Venetian, he got in contact with a guy from Arizona that made him a copy of the Red Special, the guitar Brian May used to record in every Queen album. The guitar tho is a bit different from Brian's one, especially the pick-ups. In addition to using his home-made guitar he prefers to use a coin (200 lire (Italian coin)Lira), instead of a more traditional plastic plectrum, on the basis that its rigidity gives him more control in playing and a more harsh sound since the metal of the coin against the metal of the strings gives a more aggressive tone compare to the metal-plastic of the plectrum. For acoustic, he favors Parkwood. A Fender Deville 2X12 has always been the amp he used to record in every albums and in every live shows. He's able to make a balance between his warm voice and the screaming distorted guitar. Discography * I Wanna Tell You a Story (2011) * The Valley (2013) References